Fate and Death
20 July 2014 By Abi Giwa
Some victims of the crash (Courtesy:nytimes.com)
298 people were forced out of existence against their will last Thursday as it often happened on this dark plain called earth. If they had a choice, they would never have chosen to exit the world that day and that way.
Cast your mind back and remember people who had died not in a way any human being would ever wish to die. You will find the numbers innumerable, and you may remember Matthew Arnold's poem Dover Beach and his words about, "The turbid ebb and human misery, and that the world which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain, and that we are here as on dark long plain, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night. "
We live in a world where we cannot choose the way we live and the way we die. This mystery informed the chant in 'Oedipus', "Therefore, wait to see life's ending ere thou count one mortal blessed. Wait till free from pain and sorrow he has gained his final rest."
Cast your mind back and remember people who had died not in a way any human being would ever wish to die. You will find the numbers innumerable, and you may remember Matthew Arnold's poem Dover Beach and his words about, "The turbid ebb and human misery, and that the world which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain, and that we are here as on dark long plain, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night. "
We live in a world where we cannot choose the way we live and the way we die. This mystery informed the chant in 'Oedipus', "Therefore, wait to see life's ending ere thou count one mortal blessed. Wait till free from pain and sorrow he has gained his final rest."
